Revealed
by Corporal Spivilles
Summary: Exwomanizer Damien Malfoy, son of Draco Malfoy, tells his shrink about the loss of his first real love. Oneshot.


**A/N:** This may seem a little confusing. If it does, just go read The Revelation, my other story. That one's not finished...but even what's there should help a bit. -

* * *

"When was it that you first realized you loved her?"

Damien sighed and ruffled his hair with a weak, exasperated laugh.

"It's been so long…I can barely remember a time when I didn't love her…"

"It's been two weeks, Damien."

"Oh…right," the boy said. He laughed again. "I guess I've just been trying not to remember."

"Try. This is for your own good."

"Right, yeah. Let's see…it was…yeah, now I remember. I remember the exact moment when I realized it. I already told you that she was tutoring me, right?"

"Yes, Damien. You'd gotten to the part where she…erm…turned you into a woman."

Damien chuckled. He remembered that fondly now; he remembered it only as a tribute to her genius. He'd almost forgotten how angry he'd been when she'd done it.

"Yeah. Well…after that, I was so angry that I stopped going to the tutoring sessions. She kept writing me on that parchment of hers…at first she'd just send me a time and location, as usual. I just ignored it. After four or five times of doing that, she would start adding a little note…'please come, Damien' or 'N.E.W.T.s are coming up, Damien'…things like that. After that, I threw the parchment away. I don't know if she knew that I'd done it…I don't know if she kept writing. I was too angry and humiliated to care.

"One day, she came up to me in the library and handed me a little book. 'Here, Mr. Malfoy,' she said. 'You left this in Transfiguration.' I didn't know what it was, but I took it. I was annoyed with her for talking to me in public, but now that I think about it I should have been grateful that she didn't call me by my first name. She was still trying to keep the ex-tutoring sessions a secret."

"Did you read the book?"

"Yeah. It wasn't really a book…it was a journal. She'd started it the night she agreed to tutor me. The night this whole mess started. The early pages were filled with her rants about me and how annoying she found me. There was a lot of arithmancy…her using numbers and stuff to find meanings in my name and things like that. I got bored with it and tossed it away. It was just the ramblings of some idiot girl. That's what I thought at the time.

"Later, though, I was drawn to it. I knew it was a journal; I didn't know how long she'd written in it. I had spent so much time trying to analyze her and figure out what she was thinking…and now here, I realized, was exactly that. In that book was exactly what she'd been thinking. I couldn't resist. I had to know."

"What did it say?"

"Mostly just whining, I suppose. She wrote about that first kiss like it had broken her heart…she'd provoked me, she knew it, and she'd enjoyed the kiss. She wrote that she 'just wished it had been someone who actually cared.' That hurt a little. But not because I did care. It hurt because it meant she'd known about the game all along. She'd known I was pretending. Sometimes I think that's why she did it; provoked me, that is. She was testing me…or something, I don't know."

"Mmhmm…what else?"

"There was an entry she made after she created the spell she used on me. The handwriting was really shaky and there were water spots on the page. I think she had been crying. She said that she knew she'd regret it later, but she felt it had to be done. She even wrote a last message to her family at the end of the entry. I think she expected me to kill her."

He paused to wipe a tear from his eye. The bland man across from him waited, giving him a moment, before pressing him further.

"Yes, and?"

"I felt like killing her when it happened. I laughed when I read that part, because I'd certainly felt like killing her."

"I see. What about the rest of her journal?"

"It got more depressed and sad after I stopped going to lessons. She wrote things like 'he didn't show up tonight either. But here's the thing: I don't know if I'm sad because he's going to fail Transfiguration or because I didn't get to see him.' That made me laugh too. It meant I had gotten through to her. I had succeeded, even if I hadn't reaped the rewards. You have to understand, this is when I still hated her."

"I understand. Please go on."

"The journal continued in that vein until the end. The last thing it said was 'by Merlin…I think I'm in love with him.' You can imagine how pleased I was to read that. I had triumphed. Now, all I had to do was find her, fake an apology, and gather up my spoils, if you know what I mean. But…"

"But?" the bland man asked after a pause. Damien sighed.

"Things didn't go as planned," he said. "I went to her. I told her I was sorry. I pulled her into my arms. She started crying. She wasn't buying it. I should have expected that even if she loved me, she'd be clever enough to figure out that I couldn't possibly love her back."

"What happened next?"

"She told me that she wanted this to be a goodbye; a closure. I got angry. I didn't want it to be the end; not just because I hadn't had sex with her yet, but because it meant that I didn't have her to puzzle over anymore. Even while I'd been avoiding her, I'd sit there, if I got bored enough, and wonder what she was doing, or what she was thinking, or whether she'd try to see me.

"She turned to leave. I think it was that moment, when she was walking away from me, that I realized it. Realized that I loved her. I knew that if I didn't do something, that'd be the last time she'd walk away from me, and I didn't want that.

"I hadn't been careful enough. I'd messed up and allowed myself to become too obsessed with breaking her. To break her, I had to learn everything about her. In learning everything about her, I discovered what an amazing person she was. Originally, I just thought that would make it that much more fun to ruin her. In that moment, with her turning away from me, I realized that I had never wanted to ruin her. Without my knowing, my original desire to sleep with her had turned into a desire to call her my own, and not just in a physical sense. I wanted to date her. I wanted to be able to sit and laugh with her the way we'd done at the second lesson. I'd never been able to do that with any other girl. Other girls were either stupid or just as arrogant and pissy as me. Lucinda wasn't like that. I wanted her."

"So what did you do?"

"I ran after her. Grabbed her arm. I spun her around and I pulled her to me and I kissed her. She kissed me back; it was amateur but it was desperate. I was holding her head, my thumbs on her cheeks; I could feel her tears. I slipped my hands down to her waist and clung to her. She broke the kiss and wrestled out of my grasp. She backed up and told me that it could never work. I told her that I loved her. I told her that we would make it work; I said, 'to hell with our families and what they think. I love you, Lucinda, I love _you_.' She just shook her head. Then she left."

Damien paused and gave a long, heavy sigh before continuing, his voice gradually more depressed.

"We graduated not long after. We hadn't spoken to each other since that night. When I got home, I told my father to give the Malfoy inheritance to Demetria. Told him I didn't want it. Said I was leaving and probably wouldn't be coming back. As you can imagine, he wasn't very happy. He wanted to know what the hell had happened to me. He actually threatened me with his wand and asked if I was even really his son. So I told him. I told him I was in love with a Weasley."

"And how did he react?"

"He went crazy. I'm sure if he could have he would have attacked every Weasley he could find. Good thing there are so many. I didn't tell him which Weasley I was in love with and there were too many for him to figure out which."

"Mmhmm. What did you do afterwards?"

"I went to the Burrow. I didn't know which Weasleys were living there, but I figured whoever they were they'd be able to tell me where Ron and Hermione were living. I think the ones there were the oldest brother and the French girl. But yeah…they were a little confused, but they told me where Lucinda lived. So I went there.

"Ron and Hermione were even more confused and a little suspicious that a Malfoy was there looking for their daughter, but after I sat down and told them everything they seemed a little more trusting."

"Was Lucinda there?"

"No, she'd taken her younger brother to Diagon Alley or something like that. But they let me stay and wait for her."

"What happened when she got home?"

"We went outside to talk…I told her about what happened between me and my father. She called me an idiot. But she kissed me after she did," Damien said with a slight grin.

"After that, I thought everything would be okay. And it was, for a few weeks. They let me stay with them. Lucinda and I started properly dating. I didn't have to live up to anyone's expectations in that house. I realized that I could be myself. After that I realized that I didn't really know who I was. But Lucinda was helping me find myself. I couldn't have been happier."

He paused again, trying very hard not to break down. Remembering all of this was harder than he'd thought. The bland man did nothing but sit there. _Bastard_, Damien thought. _He could at least offer me a tissue._

He forced down his tears and took a deep breath before going on with the story.

"My dad found out where I was staying and came over. He yelled at Ron and Hermione and Lucinda pushed me out the backdoor. She told me to leave and come back later, after he'd left. I tried to get her to come with me, but she wouldn't. She kissed me and told me she'd handle it.

"So I left. I have no idea what transpired while I was gone, but when I came back the house wasn't there. Well; when I say wasn't there I mean it wasn't a house anymore. It was a pile of charred, smoking rubble. The Ministry was already there, doing spells and stuff to make sure the Muggles wouldn't notice or remember it. One of them recognized me as a Malfoy and told me what happened. A Death Eater attack, he said. The Mark had been overhead. No one inside had survived.

"I didn't let on that I'd been staying there. I just went on my way. But I was screaming inside. My father had killed them. He'd killed them all, and it had been my fault. I went back to the Manor, but they wouldn't let me in. So I went back to the other Weasleys. If they had been any other family, they probably would have turned me away. But they understood. I don't know why I ever insulted them or tormented them. I just never knew such people existed."

Damien sighed again and put his head in his hands, choking back a sob. The bland man sighed and put a hand through his hair. She smiled as she felt it grow, restoring itself to its long, blonde, natural state. She felt the tweed suit get baggier and baggier. _It feels good to be myself again_, she thought. She leaned forward, setting aside her clipboard, and pushed Damien's hands away from his face. She caught him under the chin and forced him to look up, grinning at the shocked expression on his face.

"Damien," she said, shaking her head. "You underestimate me."


End file.
